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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26335360">A Matched Set</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture'>lovetincture</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:42:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,118</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26335360</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Lucifer thinks it would be nice to collect the full set. The Winchesters have been a perpetual thorn in his side, and sometimes he thinks it’d be nice to muss them up, make them all dirty.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lucifer/Mary Winchester, Lucifer/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Matched Set</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My writing process in a nutshell: You know what would be the worst thing of all time?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was dark in the Cage, dark and cold. Sam didn’t think the dark would bother him as much as it did. There were horrors in it—things Lucifer did to him; things Michael did, before Michael gave up and drifted into despair—but somehow none of them were as bad as the dark.</p><p>He hadn’t known dark could be like that, so whole and complete, as if it were a tangible thing. He hadn’t conceived of a space that light couldn’t touch, a place cut off from any notion of <em> goodness. </em> He’s read the Bible, cover to cover, more than once. He’s not wholly unfamiliar with the catechism—industry hazard. He knows of the Christian conception of Hell as the absence of God’s presence. It never occurred to him to conceive of it as an absence of everything.</p><p>Toward the end (but he didn’t know it was the end at the time, did he—could never have predicted; time had lost all its meaning, just on and on, pain without cease) he would have given anything, <em> done </em> anything for a reprieve from the formless blackness, the lack of sight and sound. Would and often did.</p><p>He wasn’t proud of himself. He didn’t have to be. Something else he learned down in the Cage, besides the dark: shame was a luxury.</p><p>Shame was for people who hadn’t had their hearts shredded by the slow dissection of someone who’d pawed through their head. Who hadn’t had their worst secrets dragged out into the light, hadn’t had their every nerve flayed alive.</p><p>Shame was for anyone who still had hope, and that wasn’t Sam. Not anymore, not for a while yet.</p><p>But he did have this—had a hand on his ankle, on his wrist, on his thigh. To have any touch at all—it left him shuddering with relief.</p><p>He’d be lying if he said he never asked for it. If in all those years, he never leaned into it, said <em> yes, please. </em></p><p>He dreams about it sometimes, wakes in the bunker covered in sweat, safe in his own bed, if safe is even real. He wakes in the dark.</p><p>He wakes crying, or begging, or straining toward release. He wakes with his cock hard and the sense-memory of a cold tongue in his mouth. He balls his hands into fists at his side and refuses to touch. He refuses to fucking <em> miss it. </em></p><p>* * *</p><p>They’ve been walking through the godforsaken (literally) wilderness for weeks. It feels like weeks. It’s hard to keep track. It’s always grey here. The nights aren’t that much different from the days, and at first they hadn’t stopped at all, until Mary had snapped that Lucifer was right—she was no good to him dead, and that’s exactly what she’d be if she couldn’t get some goddamn <em> sleep. </em></p><p>So now they rest, grudgingly, not as often as she’d like but often enough. Enough to keep going, and what does she want kindness from him for, anyway? God forbid. She’d shot the last man who’d been kind to her pointblank between the eyes.</p><p>She finds herself looking at him sometimes at night—Lucifer. She makes herself say the name to herself. He’s not handsome or charming. He’s got a personality that could strip the paint from the walls, caustic and unpleasant. Grating in every way. She doesn’t know everything about Lucifer and her sons, but she knows enough, enough to know that there’s history there—bad blood. Mary’s never been a stupid woman. She can take her guesses.</p><p>Still, it gets lonely. They’re stumbling through the grey-washed wilderness, stabbing and hacking and <em> smiting </em> their way through, wasteland without end. It’s the end of all things. Fireballs rain from the sky, and angels and demons alike want their blood between their teeth. To say that things are upside down requires that she retain an internal compass that points to rightside up, and she doesn’t. She can’t.</p><p>He’s the only person she’s spoken to in weeks. Months? He. Lucifer—be specific.</p><p>So maybe on a lonely night (day? who can tell?) she lets him in. Maybe they do it in the dirt, all their clothes still on because everything wants their blood between their teeth, gore-soaked jeans pushed down around her ass and her ratty underwear pushed to the side.</p><p>“Oh, you are so <em> like </em> him,” Lucifer says. It takes Mary blessed, blissful seconds to work out what he means, a small reprieve before being smacked in the face with the full horror of it.</p><p>Lucifer hisses in her ear, filthy things about her youngest son, the way he’d felt, the way he’d moaned—such a <em> slut, </em> Lucifer says. Couldn’t get enough of me, like mother like son—and she tries to wrench herself free, half twisting around before he clamps his hands around her hips and holds her still. She comes around his dick, still cursing a blue streak while he laughs and licks at the shell of her ear.</p><p>She clocks him in the face after, over and over until her knuckles are bruised and his laugh has gone wet and red.</p><p>He spits on the sand, and so does she. She can’t get the taste out of her mouth for a week.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Sometimes Lucifer thinks it would be nice to collect the full set—all the Winchesters, and surely the broken angel counts as one of those. He’d taken liberties with the vessel, of course he had. He’s only human, as they say, even if that’s not quite true.</p><p>It’s an idle fascination, something akin to collecting bottle caps or coins, any one of those weird little monkey fixations with shiny objects. The Winchesters have been a perpetual thorn in his side, and sometimes he thinks it’d be nice to muss them up, make them all dirty.</p><p>The loud, angry one—the unimportant one—that could be fun. He comes onto him in the hall, wearing Jimmy Novak’s face. He sees the way Dean Winchester looks at him, like Lucifer’s playing with his favorite toy. There’s something so fun about dangling it in his face and snatching it back. He flaunts it a little, walking by him too close in the hall.</p><p>Dean’s nostrils flare like a beast scenting a threat, and he gives Lucifer a wide berth, shoulders gone stiff and tense.</p><p>Lucifer oozes into his space, pressing close so Dean has to either brush by him or stop. He stops.</p><p><em> “Move,” </em> Dean grits through his teeth.</p><p>“Or what?”</p><p>“Or I’ll make you, you slimy fuck.”</p><p>Lucifer clicks Castiel’s tongue. “Promises, promises.”</p><p>Dean shoulder-checks him as he shoves past, and Lucifer wolf-whistles at his retreating back. Oh, it’s going to be a good day.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm on <a href="http://twitter.com/lovetincture">Twitter</a> if you want to say what's up.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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